Guest Post by Jason Miller, Discovering the Hope

At this point in my life I do not have a full-time ministry job. I work too many hours a week as a manager in a blue-collar business to pay the bills, but now that I am ordained and am working on my master’s thesis, I am hopeful that the Lord would allow me a return to full-time ministry. During a conversation recently with a customer at my job, we were talking about my background as a full-time pastor and my desire to return to that arrangement. Then he went and did it: he let loose with a “real world” bomb. “Well,” he said, “at least this job has given you some real world experience to help you when you talk to people as a priest.”

This conception that there is somehow a “real world” and, I guess, a “church world,” is so widespread that it is virtually taken for granted. We nod approvingly when pastors tell of their work in some other profession and how it relates to something they are trying to teach us. In fact, in the Anglican tradition, more and more of our priests are second-career individuals.

Yet this benumbed obeisance to a shibboleth of our culture may be cast differently when examined from another perspective: name one other career where we say that those in that field ought to learn another field in order to do well in their chosen field. Do we ask CPA’s or construction workers or business owners or CEO’s or lawyers or electricians to take employment in positions completely out of their field of expertise, in order to make them better at what they really want to do?

It is true that, in my current non-ministry occupation, I have faced a number of significant challenges, and enjoyed success. I have had to think and act quickly, explain a customer’s needs, deal with angry employees and customers, troubleshoot, be creative, and sometimes just stick it out when every bone in my body wants to quit. But I had similar challenges, opportunities and rewards in full-time pastoral ministry.

All things being equal, I am not convinced that my experience in non-ministry employment makes me a better pastor. I am wiser than I was three years ago, but I was wiser after four-plus years of full-time ministry. I was wiser in each case because I sought to listen and learn, not because of the employment I held.

My wife, Rebecca, and I decided to drop the large majority of our latest tax refund on a brand-new front-loading washer and dryer. As we visited the stores and talked with salespeople, what we found most appealing about the salespeople was not how much they knew about our lives, how much they could relate to where Rebecca went to school or where I work. What we found most appealing was when they knew their product, listened to our questions and helped us find what is best for us.

The pastor is most beneficial to others by focusing on his trade: immersing himself in the Holy Scriptures and Christian theology, leading worship in Word and Sacrament, becoming skillful as a listener, counselor, trainer, and leader, and most of all, pursuing a life that knows and proclaims the Holy Love of the Triune God. Sounds like a real world to me.